The New Orleans Police Department will soon hire 16 new recruits thanks to a multimillion-dollar federal grant aimed at boosting police staffing. The $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services will allow the NOPD to begin a new recruit class in late 2011 or early 2012, the first under Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration.

The money will cover the officers' salaries and benefits for three years, Landrieu said Thursday at a City Hall news conference. It is part of a pool of more than $243 million in grants that the federal government meted out Thursday to 238 law enforcement agencies across the country.

"This is a great day for the community," Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said.

The grant should help stem the steady loss of officers within NOPD's ranks. Due to financial constraints and fiscal budgeting, the beleaguered department has not hired an officer in more than 18 months. About 191 officers left the department during that period, bringing the current staffing level to 1,353 officers. The police force today is about a hundred officers less than it was five years ago.

Serpas said turning a recruit into a cop takes about a year. Recruits go through six months of academy training and then six months of field training. The new officers will replace veteran patrol officers that Serpas intends to soon shift to the overworked homicide division, where detectives juggle more cases than the nationally recommended workload.

The goal, Serpas said, is to bulk up the homicide division and free up detectives to become more engaged with the community, boosting dialogue between cops and citizens.

It's unclear if the federal grant will allow for the city to hire still more officers next year. Serpas noted at the news conference that a typical recruit class is between 25 and 30 applicants, almost double the number of officers allotted under the federal grant. Landrieu responded with a joke, noting that it sounded like Serpas was making a budget request.

Later, the mayor took on a more grave tone about the hard choices the city will have to make in next year's budget.

"We will do absolutely everything we can given the assets we have," he said, noting that cities across the country, and their police forces, are facing stiff cuts.Landrieu was joined by Serpas and several other public safety officials and city politicians. Several said the grant is a sign that the federal government believes in the NOPD and wants to invest in its future.

The NOPD is on the cusp of of a federal consent decree, which will outline a set of mandated reforms that will be overseen by a monitor and federal judge. The decree, now being drafted by federal and local officials, follows a scathing federal assessment of the agency that found officers routinely violated the constitution. Federal officials have called it one of the most troubled departments in the country.

More than 2,700 law enforcement agencies applied for the federal COPS grants, Landrieu said. In Louisiana, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's office received $1.2 million in grant funding and the West Monroe Police Department snared $564,000.